


Breaking Point

by tristesses



Category: Spin Trilogy - Chris Moriarty
Genre: F/M, Masturbation, Post-Spin State
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 11:30:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17021856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/pseuds/tristesses
Summary: Li and Cohen have time.





	Breaking Point

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ololon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ololon/gifts).



There was nothing to do in slow time.

Unable to access streamspace, Li occasionally had a vauge, unsettling premonition of what it was like to live life unwired, what it had been like for those distant humans far in the past—not her ancestors, no, but the ancestors of those who constructed her. She didn't like the thought, tried to put it away when it came to her.

Besides, there was the intraface. There was Cohen.

She was too prickly for a honeymoon period, and there were too many questions left unanswered, but he was here—most of me, anyway—and they were entangled in each other so deeply Hannah Sharifi could've written a paper on it.

And once she was more or less patched up, once the bruises faded and her reinforced body had begun to heal, Li realized she had a lot of free time.  
She was in her quarters, a small box with a toilet and shower attached, basically just enough to fit a cot and a bit of storage space with a biometric lock. Enough to do what she wanted to do.

It had been—Christ, it had been since before the had even set foot on Compson's World for the second time, before Metz, even—a while, at any rate, since she'd done this. But it beckoned to her, with the same bone-deep ache with which she'd leaned into Cohen's-as-Ramirez arms, or when Bella had brushed her skin with her fingertips.

_Will you take off your clothes?_ Cohen asked. Not, she thought, a request, but a question out of curiosity.

"No," she said under her breath. "I don't usually."

Not all the way, at least. Li squirmed out of her pants, awkward in the tight quarters, and kicked off her underwear. That was enough for what she had planned.

_Take your time, please_ , Cohen said, and this time it was a request. _I want to experience this with you_.

"I never take my time," Li replied, and rucked up her shirt, drawing her fingers over the compact muscle protecting her ribs. Her arm was still weak, the ceramsteel grating on tendon, so she left that arm at her side. It was just the barest touch, but enough to send shivers running down her spine.

_For me?_

Of course, that made Li perversely want to make it as quick as possible. A smash-and-grab job, releasing a short burst of dopamine and then putting her clothes back on, all business, ready to go.

But she was trying not to run away anymore.

Cohen was waiting in perfect silence.

"Okay," she breathed. "Fine. Okay."

_Thank you, Catherine._

So. Her body, then. Li spread her legs and touched her inner thighs in the same delicate way she'd stroked her side. It felt ridiculous, doing this with Cohen in her head. Ridiculous, touching herself with care.

_You deserve care_ , Cohen murmured. She didn't dignify this with a response.

But the touches were enough; that, plus her body's hunger for a release too long in the making. Her nipples hardened, goosebumps shivered down her body. Li brought her fingers to her mouth, licked them to moisten them. She felt Cohen's attention grow even more alert than before. She hadn't let him see her like this, during that one night together, even though he'd asked.

She brought her wet fingers down, and thought at him, _Couldn't we have done this in the memory palace?_

He laughed. _I wanted to see you like this too. I want to experience all of you, Catherine._

She had no answer to that, so she didn't say anything.

Her hand between her legs, her fingers parting the lips of her vulva. There were so many less sterile words for this—cunt, pussy, gash—none of which she ever applied to herself, not because of their crudity but because they simply didn't feel right. They felt like violence. She didn't want this to be violent.

Cohen wasn't breathing in her head, of course, but she felt him there, the hum of his networks—a side effect of the intraface—an unmistakeable presence. She pressed down, circling to find the clit, but not actually touching it. Too much, too soon.

Wet fingers tracing a circle. Cohen watching, respectfully silent; this was a private thing, and for her to show him a mark of trust. She felt like her skin was buzzing with his attention, but it felt good, and when her fingers slipped onto her clit, Cohen tensed with her.

"You remember," she whispered, and swirled her fingers around, almost lazily. Tension was building inside her, and half-meaningless images were flashing through her head: Cohen wearing Roland, wearing Chiara, wearing Bella, even Ramirez, talking and gesturing and smiling at her with that curved, too-knowledgeable smile, looking at her with those too-intense eyes. Cohen flicked through the images with her, and she could feel the emotion of smiling echoing through her wired brain.

"Like this," she said, and increased the pressure on her clit. The muscles in her legs were drawing tight, but the soreness didn't seem to matter right now.  
Other people reported orgasm as feeling like a cresting wave; Li didn't feel it like that. For her, it was the snap of elastic, or of metal pushed past its breaking point: a single point of intensity that faded over minutes.

She took her hand away, re-wet her fingertips. She wasn't ready for the snap yet.

The sensation of something building inside her was still there, if banked, when she put her hand back. It was a dance of denial with her body, giving and taking and giving again, and she could feel Cohen tensing and releasing and tensing along with her muscles.

_Is it all that different?_ she thought at him. From shunting through someone else?

_Oh yes, Catherine,_ he said back, almost reverently. _It truly is._

She latched onto that, the sound of awe and affection in his voice, and pushed away her vague discomfort, the fight-or-flight response. No more dancing. Li's breath came quick and hard and she felt herself go rigid. A burst of pain from her arm but that was nothing, nothing compared to the snap of pleasure coursing through her body right then.

Thank you, Catherine, Cohen said into the pleasant emptiness of her mind, a few seconds after she'd relaxed.

"Want to do it again?" she asked.

Now?

"Why not?" Li stretched, then took off her shirt and tossed it in the same direction of her pants. "We have time."

So we do, Cohen said, and there were layers of meaning beneath his words Li couldn't decipher. So we do.


End file.
